Unlike interactive cable television systems that have interactivity services designed into the systems, most of broadcast programming is typically a one-way service with no mechanism for interactivity. Add-on systems to provide interactivity to conventional broadcast programming have been proposed but are not appealing to the public because they are relatively complicated, time consuming to operate, and in some instances do not provide true real-time interactivity.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,314,577 B1 to Pocok (hereinafter '577 patent) describes a system that allows users to access additional information associated with a broadcast. The user can access the additional information by telephoning an interactive voice response (IVR) system and providing verbally or by means of a telephone's touch tone pad the call letters (e.g., WRQX) or frequency of the station presenting the broadcast. The system then presents to the user in reverse chronological order program descriptions or excerpts from which the user is allowed to select one for further examination.
Another add-on system is provided by ConneXus Corp. of Berwyn, Pa. The ConneXus service requests a user to navigate voice menus hosted by an IVR system or graphical menus provided by a server to a browser running on a computing device in order to provide information such as state, city, and station name. The ConneXus then provides a list of recent songs that have been presented by the station identified while navigating the voice or graphical menus. While the ConneXus system and the system described in the '577 patent are a desirable improvement over the system that has human operators handle user inquiries, neither system provides the ease and swiftness associated with interactive cable systems or Internet based systems.
Another two add-on systems, Xenote, Inc.'s iTag® and Sony Inc.'s eMarker®, existed briefly between 1999 and 2001, but were unable to generate significant user loyalty or interest to be financially viable. Xenote, formerly of San Mateo, Calif., launched its service before Sony of Tokyo, Japan launched its essentially identical service. Both Xenote and Sony sold a simple device that the user could employ while experiencing radio broadcasts. Whenever a song or advertisement of interest is presented by a radio, the user could depress a button on the device causing the device to store the time the user depressed the button. After making one or more button depressions, to obtain information about the song or advertisement, the user would have to attach the device to a computer connected to an Internet-based website. An application executed by the computer would retrieve the time stamps from the device and then provide to the website the time stamps. If the user were able to remember the identity of each station that was associated with the times and provide the identities to the website, the website would then provide information related to the song or advertisement that had piqued the user's interest. Due to the lack of immediate interaction, the requirement that users remember the identity of each station that is associated with each stored time, or both shortcomings, usage of the Xenote device dropped off or ended completely within one month of obtaining the device. Sony's eMarker® service was terminated a few months after Xenote went out of business.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 (hereinafter '795 patent) to Mankowitz describes an integrated system rather than an add-on system for providing interactivity. The device described in the '795 patent is actually a new type of radio that is incapable of providing interactivity for programming presented by other radios, but is capable of providing interactivity for programming presented by the receiver within the device described in the '795 patent. The device described in the '795 patent includes a receiver that presents songs and advertisements to the user and, upon user depression of a button, stores the time and channel or call letters of the station to which the receiver is tuned. Additional information regarding the song or advertisement can be obtained by having the device dial a telephone number that is associated with the particular station that is associated with the button depression. The radio then provides each of the stored time and channel pairs to a server which replies back with the additional information. While the device described in the '795 patent doesn't require the user to memorize for each button depression the channel or station that was being listened to, the device cannot be used to provide interactivity for existing radios. Furthermore, the device described in the '795 patent requires that two stations that have the same channel but are geographically displaced such that their broadcast areas do not overlap to be each assigned a different telephone number. Two numbers are required because the device and system described in the '795 patent are unable to resolve the ambiguity about which station the user is referring to using just the time and channel information provided by the device.
Existing online, web-based, jukebox, or over the air programming does not provide a personalized user experience. For example, a person listening to a radio station, jukebox, or streaming programming has very little or no capacity to change the programming to suit the person's taste in music, advertisements, or both. Listeners often are forced to constantly change channels or sources of programming (e.g., compact disc, tape, or other storage media). For example, if a song is unacceptable to the user, the listener is forced to change channels in order to hear an alternative song. The same is true of advertisements.
A user of mass broadcast programming has little or no control over how often items are presented relative to each other and how often they are presented within a predefined span of time. For instance, even when listening to broadcast programming, a user does not want to be bothered with having to change channels because a song is being heard for the second time in a very short span of time, or because some songs are heard too frequently relative to other songs that are more pleasing to the user.
Users of media players (e.g., MP3 player) have limited ability to exchange programming or music easily. A user of a first media player often has to share the user's ear plugs with another person so that the other person can sample music in order to determine whether the music is desirable. This is a time consuming and non-intelligent way to share music.
Existing broadcast reception devices fail to capture indications of whether programming is acceptable to the user. Furthermore, such indications are not used to tailor programming to suit the individual. Furthermore, existing devices do not provide a simple mechanism for indicating that the user would like an alert to be received in anticipation of certain programming being aired.
The prior art solutions suffer from, among other shortcomings, at least one or more of the following deficiencies: relatively complex to use, require user to make determinations about what station is being listened to before being able to use the interactivity service, time consuming to operate, incapable of true real-time interactivity, or incapable of providing interactivity without the purchase of an additional broadcast receiver, do not allow easy intelligent exchange of programming among users, fail to capture indications of acceptability of items of programming, fail to use such indications to customize programming, and do not provide a personalized experience. Given the shortcomings of the prior art, it is desirable to provide solutions that permit users to consume programming in a manner that overcomes deficiencies of the prior art.